Behind Obama's turnaround on Libya

On Tuesday afternoon, as Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi moved in for the kill on pro-democracy rebels challenging his regime, an agitated President Barack Obama turned to his national security team in the White House and demanded: “I want to see all of the options.”

To the surprise of some in the room, Obama wanted alternatives that moved considerably beyond the mere imposition of the no-fly zone long advocated by hawks in the administration and European allies, to a broader range of military options that included attacks on pro-Qadhafi armor and artillery advocated by his U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice days before.

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Obama had one demand, according to people close to him: Not one American boot could touch one grain of Libyan sand.

Between 9 p.m. and midnight, Obama’s team of somewhat hesitant warriors, led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, reconvened with Obama in the White House, according to senior administration officials, to hammer out the language of what would become U.N. Resolution 1973 when the U.N. Security Council approved it early Thursday evening.

The administration official who was one of the strongest proponents for direct action, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was traveling in Europe and North Africa, too exhausted to join the discussion via secure link. Yet over the next 48 hours, Clinton and Rice would work the phones, twisting the requisite arms to win a 10-0 Security Council vote.

Obama’s rapid transition from skeptic of military intervention to advocating an even broader mandate than his European partners was a reflection of the president’s visceral fear of a massacre in the Libyan Sahara — and his recognition that the Arab League, by signaling its support, would mean the intervention was not just something carried out only by the U.S. and Europe, Obama aides told POLITICO.

“Building the international coalition was vital for the president, it was a threshold question,” said a senior administration official, on condition of anonymity.

It allowed Obama to align his support for the growing wave of pro-democracy youth rebelling against sclerotic dictators — with concrete policy to back it up.

Obama needed less prodding than the doves in his staff may have imagined. Even though he was personally inclined to oppose intervention — haunted by the Iraq War — he amped up his anti-Qadhafi language early in the crisis, shifting to a call for his ouster minutes after the last ferry with U.S. citizens left Libya’s Mediterranean coast.

Over and over, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that all options were “on the table.” And as the rebels faltered, Obama took increasing heed of Clinton’s reminders of the costs of inaction during the Rwanda genocide when her husband was president.

Still, the result of Obama’s late-in-the-game decision is an ungainly hybrid of a military enterprise with no guarantee of success.

The U.N. has the mandate to create an international coalition led by France and Great Britain, with pilots from nearby Mideast countries — but its most powerful partner, the U.S., will likely play a back-seat role, providing logistical support, intelligence and possibly launching missile strikes on Qadhafi’s infrastructure.

And it’s possible the help won’t arrive in time to save rebels holed up in four pockets, the biggest in Benghazi, a city of 700,000 that could turn into a killing field if recaptured by Qadhafi’s army of hardcore loyalists and mercenaries.

Then there’s the feasibility of the larger underlying mission — ousting Qadhafi through the destruction of his military infrastructure, a kind of regime change on the cheap.